Gerhard Oberhammer’s Works on Sāṃkhya and Yoga in Light of Recent Research
https://doi.org/10.25205/1818-7919-2022-21-10-147-155
Abstract
Gerhard Oberhammer is a prominent Austrian scholar of Indian philosophy and religions. This paper presents an analysis of Oberhammer’s works on spiritual practices of sāṃkhya and yoga. Based on the works that belong to the traditions of sāṃkhya, Patañjali’s yoga and the Pāśupata’s śaivism, Oberhammer reconstructed the phenomenology of each spiritual path and developed a general typology of yogic practices. Particularly, in the Yoga-sūtras, he identified four distinct practices of different origin, which implies that initially this work was a compilation. Oberhammer revealed an affinity between one of these practices and a later teaching of the theistic Mṛgendratantra. Based on the material of the Yuktidīpikā he described the phenomenology of the spiritual path of sāṃkhya, a tradition that is often believed to be of purely theoretical character. Oberhammer’s works on sāṃkhya and yoga attracted interest of scholars of Indian religions. However, with the course of time they were almost forgotten, not least because of the general positivist bias of modern indology. It seems promising to compare Oberhammer’s typology of yogic practices, as well as his philosophical teaching of transcendental hermeneutics, with the works by Mircea Eliade and Evgeniy Torchinov, which provide broad descriptions of religious practices with a general focus on the phenomenology of spiritual experience.
Keywords
Supporting agencies: The work was carried out within the framework of the project of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research no. 20-011-00479 «Transcendental Hermeneutics of G. Oberhammer in History of European and Indian Philosophy».
About the Author
E. A. Desnitskaya
Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
St. Petersburg
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For citations:
Desnitskaya E.A. Gerhard Oberhammer’s Works on Sāṃkhya and Yoga in Light of Recent Research. Vestnik NSU. Series: History and Philology. 2022;21(10):147-155. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.25205/1818-7919-2022-21-10-147-155
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